


a long gold sliding into dawn

by synecdochic



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Imported, Jossed, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-15
Updated: 2006-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-28 15:55:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6335113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Rodney breathes out, rough and exasperated. John thinks he might be the only one in the universe who can hear the tenderness contained in Rodney's murmured "you are so fucked in the head".</em> </p><p>A series of ways in which two people learn how to trust what's not being said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a long gold sliding into dawn

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/57749.html) 2006-02-15.)
> 
> Thanks to miella for reading the first scene and saying "that's great, now write the rest of it", to chopchica for going through and gushing and then going back with a fine-toothed comb, and to sarahq for waking up when I come to bed and listening to me babble about what I did all night.

**i.**

John is filthy, his clothes a complete loss: sweat and mud and blood fading from crimson to russet, hasty bandages dirtied to gunboat grey. No one looks. The room is silent, save for the slow boil of the gate and the click of Elizabeth's heels as she crosses the floor. She opens her mouth -- to ask, to blame -- and he wonders what she sees in his face to make her stop and radio for a medical team instead.

He pushes past them all, feeling the weight of all those careful not-looks, and leaves the sound of her calling his name echoing down the hallway behind. It violates a hundred protocols and a thousand bits of common sense and he doesn't care. The stitches he put in will hold for a little while longer and the world won't end if he winds up with a few more scars. There's a hiss in his ears like a white-noise generator but it doesn't keep him from hearing the whispers that spring up behind him. One step after another. It's the only way to make it. He wonders if Elizabeth is still calling his name; he lost his radio a few days back. 

The lights in his quarters usually spring alive like a puppy to heel when he opens his door, but today they produce nothing more than a hesitant glow that melds with the moonlight, double moonbeams shadowing the pile of clothes on his floor as he strips, one step at a time. He takes inventory of what's left as he goes. Gun (empty), knife (snapped), shirt (unmendable), pants (stained). Boots and socks and briefs. Losing the jacket wasn't a tragedy, but they'll miss the vest; they're running low. His tags knock against his breastbone, name and date and facts, better at telling his stories than he is. 

In the dark, the clothes-heap would pass for laundry day, except for the smell: cordite and oil and iron and misery. It's on him, too, rubbed down in under his skin and into his hair. Ivory soap always smelled like lies to him, detergent and perfume meant to cover up the stink of what a body really is. The stuff they get from the Athosians is more real, bitter and yellow and slick, but he still hates the way it smells. Beggars can't be choosers, though. Clean is easy; it's honest that's hard.

Ancient showers are more like stepping into a rainforest than a waterfall and there's only so much the engineering teams can do to adapt them. He blinks against the mist, watches skin surface behind tiny rivers of dust and grime. It's hard to bandage your own right shoulder, but it's harder still to pick the bandage undone, especially when the stitches cling to the gauze. He has a lecture coming, he supposes; he fished out the bullet but hadn't been able to clean the wound first. Lucky it hadn't hit muscle, lucky it hadn't hit bone, lucky he'd been able to spare the time it took to mend it. Lucky to be spared the guilt for taking that much; when he'd finally fought through, he'd been hours late instead of minutes. It wouldn't have made any difference. He's learned to be grateful for small kindnesses.

The not-quite-stainless-steel beneath his feet really is tinted red; it's not just a trick of the light. The door to his quarters chimes, twice. He ignores it. Let them come and try to talk to him, try to treat him, try to mend him and repair him and debrief him and all the other things they all do so well. He will play along, soon enough. Once he's ready to dredge up the easy smile and the right words. The chime falls silent. He closes his eyes, buries his fingers in his hair, works the soap in deep.

A puff of clean cold air winds into the steam and he doesn't even need to open his eyes, because he locked the door but lately his quarters have gotten a little bit slutty for the right pair of hands. "Idiot," Rodney says and takes off his shirt, and "in the middle of something vitally important for our continued ability to breathe," Rodney says and toes off his boots, and "good thing they called me to let me know you were done trying to kill yourself by playing hero again," Rodney says and unbuttons his pants, and the shower doesn't get any less annoyingly anemic but Rodney's his own portable hurricane. 

John tips his head back and pulls the chain for rinse-water, watches the mud and the grime and the blood sluiced away. When he looks up, Rodney is watching him, eyes tight and hot on his face, naked and unselfconscious and bare. "You're filthy, still," Rodney says.

John shrugs and doesn't meet Rodney's eyes. He knows.

He reaches for the soap to scrub himself clean, but Rodney stops him, wraps hand around wrist and holds. "Come here," he says, and "let me," he says, and then there are gentle hands mapping out the length and breadth of his failures. 

A long time ago, he learned to distinguish between the sound of Rodney saying something vital and the sound of him lulling himself with his own voice. Rodney offers it up like a gift, an endless river skipping from word to word, and it took John forever to realize that the shape of it, not the sound, was the meaning. "--told him he was crazy, I don't know why they sent me with nothing but idiots who fail to comprehend the fundamental underpinnings of their discipline--" blends into "--stuff we traded for on that planet, you know, the one where they tried to buy you and Ford for manual labor--" into "--found out that McMillan has been holding out on us, he brought the entire first five series of Red Dwarf with him, we're thinking of holding a shunning until he agrees to share--" and all the while Rodney is working his way across John's shoulders, down his arms and chest and back, and the soap is foaming red and grey as he goes. Flecks of black dried blood flake away beneath the onslaught. 

"Rinse," Rodney says, between subordinate clauses. 

He can look down and see the edges of the wound, red and pale and still bleeding a little around tiny black stitches that are surprisingly neat and even. Then he can't see it at all, because Rodney puts one hand over the skin, not quite touching, and Rodney's voice breaks on "down in south quadrant" and stutters to a halt like someone lifted the needle from a record.

John lifts his eyes to Rodney's face. Rodney's mouth twists, and he breathes, carefully, but he doesn't look away. Instead, moving ever so deliberately, he splays his other hand across John's chest. It should make John's skin crawl, but it doesn't; it's warm and real and more human than anything John's felt in a long time. Rodney breathes in and John breathes out and Rodney flexes his fingers, touching all the places John isn't bleeding but could have been. 

"I need you to tell me what you need," Rodney says, because they've both gotten to the point where they can see the outline of the need but not the details. John is more comfortable saying things without words, so he tilts his head to the side and leans back against the wall and slides his hand, slick and damp and wet, up Rodney's arm to pull him forward.

Rodney breathes out, rough and exasperated. John thinks he might be the only one in the universe who can hear the tenderness contained in Rodney's murmured "you are so fucked in the head". 

John wets his lips, which shouldn't be so dry amidst all the steam. "Please," he says, instead of "pot, kettle," because he's trying. 

"Yeah," Rodney mutters, like a hand reaching the end of a line of text and punctuating it with a rough finality, and closes his teeth around the tendons in John's neck.

It's cold ocean in his face and it's a shot of scotch blazing down his throat and it slices through the fog and the haze and all of the dark creeping numbness like a scythe. John makes a noise in the back of his throat and wraps his hands around Rodney's biceps, torn between push and pull. Rodney covers him with his own skin, damp and soft and pale, and licks at the toothmarks to soothe them. John's starting to feel the burn of his muscles, the flutter in the backs of his knees, all the bruises and hurts and marks written deep. 

"Come back," Rodney says against the line of his good shoulder, and John clutches his fingers in the soft hair at the nape of Rodney's neck and rocks his hips into Rodney's touch. The feeling of a hand on his cock shoots up his spine like the buzz-slide of fingertips over the strings of a silenced electric guitar, vibrating through his chest and echoing through all the quiet places. "Come back," Rodney says, and John doesn't know if he means _come back to me next time_ or _come back to me now_ but he winds his arm around Rodney's body and digs his fingertips into Rodney's shoulder and holds. 

He knows that Rodney knows it's not really about sex at all, except in the way that it is, but it doesn't mean he doesn't choke off a moan when Rodney flicks his thumb against that one spot underneath the base of the head, when Rodney runs his hand downward, open-palmed, to cup his balls and rub one knuckle against the skin behind. John is starting to hurt everywhere, and thank God for that, because it means he's filling out the shape of his skin again. His legs are shaking and the steam of the shower is hot and tight in his lungs and Rodney is muttering words against his skin, strong words like _give_ and _feel_ and _safe_ and _home_ and _it's all right, it's all right_ , and John holds on like the mist will drown him if he doesn't and comes to the feel of _John, John, John_ like a mantra against his lips.

Rodney is watching him when he opens his eyes again. "So gloriously fucked," he says, low and soft and full of wonder. John can't find any words that make sense, so he presses his fingers against Rodney's lips, not to silence, just to say what he doesn't trust to his own voice. One corner of Rodney's mouth twitches upwards, then stills. "You're bleeding again," he says, and John can hear the effort it takes for him to keep his voice light.

John's shoulder is finally throbbing, flashes of heat and fever. He looks down at it and has to close his eyes. "Yeah," he says. "I suppose I should go down and let Carson take care of my shitty patch-up job."

"Yes," Rodney says, and rinses John clean one last time, washing away the last bits of grit and soap and everything else that'll stain his skin if it's left to seep in. "And let Elizabeth yell at you for not reporting back in to let us know if you were alive or dead."

John breathes, because he doesn't know what else he can do. "I tried," he says. The work of a lifetime is the only thing to keep his voice from cracking. "I was too late."

Rodney tells everyone he is a genius, and sometimes, when he does something to prove it like finishing the puzzle while everyone else is still looking for the corner pieces, John believes it. "I know," Rodney says, and John knows he does. "I could offer some kind of meaningless platitude here, but you know how useless they are." 

His hands contrast his words, gentle and soft as they reach for the towel and pat John dry, examining each square inch. John closes his eyes and takes inventory of all the things he hadn't noticed until they started to hurt. 

"You're home," Rodney says, finally, kneeling back at John's feet and wrapping his hands around John's ankles. "Come on. It's over. We have work to do."

It's a strange kind of comfort, but really, it'll do. John catches a glance at himself in the mirror, hollow eyes and sharp ribs and a catalog of ancient scars. Any day now, he'll stop feeling like he's living in a stranger's skin.

**ii.**

John does all the things he's supposed to. He smiles at Elizabeth and tells her about the trade agreement the team managed to finalize, glances over Lorne's notes on which of the third batch of arrivals aren't adapting quite as well as they should be, makes lists and puts Cadman and Parrish on mainland escort duty this week, because they need the downtime the most. He smiles at an anthropologist whose name he can't remember in the mess hall, and stops in the physics lab after dinner to reassure them all that the peace and quiet isn't going to last for long. He smiles at the sergeant who's the only other person doing laundry, empties out his pockets and washes out his canteen and goes down to the medical storeroom to replace the Epipen in his vest before he forgets. 

By the time he's done doing all the things he's supposed to do, the corridors are quiet and dark and all the infirmary doctors have gone to bed, leaving only the graveyard-shift nurses and Carson, who's hunched over the gas chromatograph like a vulture and is probably going to need to sacrifice a few chocolate bars to Dr. Lindsay, who put herself through her Ph.D. by working as a massage therapist and is currently the hottest date in town. John isn't trying to move silently, but maybe some habits die hard, because Carson jumps a foot in the air when John bumps his hip against the lab bench.

"Make a wee bit of noise, next time," Carson complains, and rubs at a pinched nerve in his shoulder. 

"Sorry," John says, and smiles at Carson. "How's he looking?"

Carson sighs and purses his lips, breathes out a sigh, but it's the expression he uses when the crisis is over and he's worked his way through to being upset and angry about the insults and indignities human bodies can produce. "He's sleeping," Carson says, and nods to the drawn curtain. "You can pop in and see him, if you'd like. He'll likely wake up soon, and I'll send him back to his quarters for a shower and a few days' rest."

John shakes his head. "Nah, I don't want to wake him up. I was just coming down to see if we were going to have to break in another scientist. Let me know if anything changes."

"Of course," Carson agrees. John turns to go, and Carson stops him with, "And get some rest yourself, Colonel. You did a good job today. If you'd gotten him back ten minutes later... well, I think we'll all just be grateful for your quick thinking."

"It was nothing," John says, and makes his escape before Carson can say anything more.

He folds his laundry on the makeshift bench and carries it all back to his quarters in a pillowcase. He smiles at two lieutenants from the _Daedalus_ who've chosen to do their required six-week dirtside rotation here instead of back on Earth, and decides that skipping his nightly run is prudence instead of laziness, because he's been babying his knee a little all evening and even good running shoes can't insulate the shocks from the catwalk plating entirely. He reads three pages in his stolen copy of _Gödel, Escher, Bach_ , putting him comfortably back on schedule, and marks his place with the scrap of MRE wrapper he's been using since his bookmark grew feet and walked off.

Eventually, he thinks the lights to nothingness and rolls over into a puddle of moonlight. He falls asleep quickly, and doesn't remember if he dreams. He comes awake again to the sound of his door opening and closing with a soft snick; he trained himself long ago to wake without signal, but here it's all right for him to open his eyes. Rodney stands there, barefoot, hair damp and mussed, wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of cut-off sweatpants that were probably old and disreputable even before Rodney's first Ph.D. John doesn't smile at Rodney at all.

"Carson said you came down to see me," Rodney says, his voice hoarse and scratchy from the oxygen. "I figured I should stop in and let you know that I've been released and save you a trip back down in the morning."

"How are you feeling?" John asks. 

Rodney snorts, drags a hand through his hair. He crosses the room and sits down on the edge of John's bed, making himself a space through hip-check and nudge. "Like I've been shot full of epinephrine and H1-receptor antagonists and hooked up to canned oxygen for ten hours. What kind of a stupid question is that?" 

John gives up on trying to stake claim to enough of his bed and sits up. The sheet slides down his chest, pale and luminous. This close, he can see the dusty, worn smudges under Rodney's eyes. "You must be feeling better, if you're calling me stupid," he says.

"Please," Rodney says, with an imperious hand-wave. "I could be inches away from death's doorstep and I'd still be calling people stupid." His hand hovers next to John's face for a hesitant second, then settles in for a landing against John's cheek. His skin is warm, but Rodney's always been exothermic. 

John turns his head into it and closes his eyes. His lips barely skim Rodney's palm as he speaks. "You know, I didn't really believe you about the allergy thing."

"Nobody ever does," Rodney says. "You'd think they'd take the word of the guy who's been living in this body for thirty-seven years over their own laughable excuse for common sense, but no. I can't count the number of doctors who have tried to kill me, not to mention the restaurants, and I know a lot of very large numbers." He strokes his fingertips over John's cheekbone. "I suppose I need to thank you and Ronon for probably saving my life. Did the Jorallans give in on the negotiations?"

"Yeah," John says. "Teyla stayed back to finish up the last of it. The guilt thing factored in pretty heavily."

"So glad to know that anaphylaxis leads to fresh produce." Rodney puts his other hand on John's shoulder. John breathes against Rodney's skin. "I'll be sure to remind everyone that I nearly died for their salad."

"Jesus," John says, and laughs, because he knows Rodney will. And then he turns his head just a little and Rodney's skin is bluish in the moonlight and he's the one who suddenly can't breathe. He shudders and brings his hand up to press against Rodney's, trapping fingers against his cheek, holding so tightly he can outline each fragile tendon with his fingertips.

"Hey," Rodney says, suddenly alarmed. "Hey, hey --" He pushes himself up to his knees on the bed. "Don't you dare go off inside your head like that without me." He thumps one fist against John's shoulder, the angle making it awkward. "No stoic face. Hey." 

"I'm not," John starts, and "it's just," and "I thought." None of them are opening gambits he's willing to play out. Rodney sighs, exasperated, and John knows what it's like to spend so long convinced the universe is conspiring to kill you that when it finally happens you can treat it like it isn't a shock at all, but this is the first time he's realizing that Rodney knows it too. He puts his hand on Rodney's shoulder, feeling the warm living weight of it, curling his fingers into tissue and bone. 

Rodney's chin tilts up and his taut tense lines ease. "Yeah," he says, "because you're kind of an idiot like that." He straddles John's knees, picks up John's hands in his own, presses them against his chest. The t-shirt is soft and nearly threadbare, and John wonders if it's actually his. Rodney says, "Get it out of your system," and John drags his hands down to rub the heels of his palms along Rodney's thighs. 

Rodney is solid and warm and not really at all fragile; John doesn't know why he keeps classifying Rodney in his head in the same category as priceless china. He smells like ozone and electricity. John gets his hands under Rodney's shirt, pulls and bunches, and Rodney ducks his head to make it easier and then drops his forehead against John's and holds it there.

"See, the thing is," Rodney starts. John puts one thumb against Rodney's nipple and curls the other hand around the nape of Rodney's neck, right against the soft hair and the knots of muscle. Rodney's mouth tastes like the toothpaste they're making out of the stuff that isn't tea tree at all despite what the botanists call it, and like the distant hint of plastic and air, and nothing at all like alien wine. John breathes against Rodney's mouth because he can and not because he has to, and Rodney makes a small soft noise into his exhale that for once isn't trying to be words at all.

"Shut up," John says. He presses his mouth against the span of Rodney's collarbone, tracing the lines and hollows with his tongue. Rodney says something indistinct and lets his head drop back, trusting John to catch him. John slides the other hand around Rodney's waist, open palm and kneading fingers, memorizing the Braille of bones and ribs as he goes. He licks the hollow of Rodney's throat, traces thin wet lines down to circle Rodney's nipples, and Rodney's hands come up to cup John's cheeks and hold.

Rodney's thighs are tensing over John's knees, trembling like a strong wind might blow them away. John can't navigate on the ground worth shit, but there are some maps even he can't misread. He pushes Rodney back against the bed, plants a knee on the mattress between Rodney's thighs, and draws the flat of his tongue along Rodney's breastbone. He can taste the faintest traces of adhesive where the monitor pads were, and Rodney sighs sharply as John flicks his tongue against them.

Hips rock up to meet him. Rodney's not completely hard yet, but John knows his body well enough to know when the scrape of fabric turns from tantalizing to annoying. He slides a hand beneath the waistband of Rodney's shorts, palming Rodney's cock and promising it anything it wants, before lifting his mouth from Rodney's skin and stripping Rodney bare. 

"This," Rodney says, and then falls silent. John almost has to laugh again, because really, so tremendously Rodney, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? He stifles the urge by burying his nose in the light down between hip and thigh, breathing in the smell of iron and soap and everything Rodney tastes like. Rodney's breath catches, and he rests one hand against the crown of John's head. John closes his eyes and lets the pressure ground him. Gently, oh-so-gently, John nips at the soft skin over Rodney's hip, memorizing the way the muscles in Rodney's stomach leap, and every damn time he gets Rodney's cock in his mouth, thick and heavy and wet, it's like a surprise all over again.

Once upon a time John would have thought Rodney would be frenetic, all whirlwind energy and heat and need, and they've done that too. But mostly Rodney just goes all still and _focused_ , fingertips digging into the mattress and every muscle locked, the same expression on his face as when he's seconds away from solving for _x_. John swallows him down and Rodney says _Jesus fuck_ and _John_ and bangs one fist against the bed the way he does when he's trying not to fuck John's mouth. John breathes through his nose and cups Rodney's hip, pulls him up and in, and Rodney says something with a lot of vowels and lifts a fist to his mouth to bite down against the shout.

In the sudden silence, punctuated only by Rodney's ragged breathing, John's universe quietly knits itself back into place. Rodney hates any stimulation just after he's come; John lets himself have one last lick, an indulgence that always earns him a halfhearted snarl, and then slides up and stretches out next to him, hips and thighs and chest pressed up against all the places he shouldn't fit.

Rodney's voice sounds drugged. He drops his head back against the pillow and reaches between them to squeeze John's cock. "Gimme a minute," he mumbles. 

"No," John says, and reaches down to twine Rodney's fingers with his own. He brings their linked hands up his cock once, just for the warm shivery reassurance of it, and then puts Rodney's hand over his hip and holds it there. "That's not -- I don't --"

"Mm," Rodney says, and his breathing evens out a little bit more. John worms himself an inch more space and fits his mouth against Rodney's shoulder, lips pressing a flutter that can only barely be called a kiss. Rodney's fingers ghost over his hip, involuntary shudder, and when Rodney says "'m glad I'm not dead too," John knows he's lucky that Rodney knows what he really means.

**iii.**

The little muscle in the corner of John's eye twitches in a staccato beat. _Tick_ as he stares over Elizabeth's shoulder and gives his report; _tick_ as he drops his gear in the equipment room; _tick_ as he declines an infirmary visit; _tick_ as nobody works up the balls to ask and he doesn't volunteer to tell them. 

It's the middle of Atlantis's night; despite four years of practice, John is never going to get used to going from high noon to moonlight in five steps total. The corridors are deserted, but John wouldn't care even if they weren't. _Tick tick tick_ follows him through the city back to his quarters, _tick tick tick_ as the door springs open while he's still halfway down the hall, and Rodney is three steps behind him and neither of them say a word.

"I --" Rodney starts, as the door shuts behind him, but that's all he manages to get out. John pushes him up against the wall, and whatever Rodney was going to say dies against John's mouth. It's not a nice kiss. It's rough and it's brutal and John can feel Rodney's breath stuttering in the back of his throat as he molds himself against warm body and startled lips. He shoves one thigh between Rodney's, digs scraped and muddy hands into Rodney's biceps. The muzzle of his Berreta worms between them; John undoes his holster with one hand, and it slides to the floor.

"Mpfhgh," Rodney says into John's mouth, something that might have been "hey" and might have been "wait", but John wraps a hand around Rodney's throat and holds him there against the wall. Rodney falls silent. He doesn't squeeze, but he knows Rodney knows he could. The pulse flutters underneath his thumb, high and tight and rapid. John bites at Rodney's lower lip, hard enough to bruise, and works his other hand between them to worry at Rodney's belt.

It takes a few seconds for Rodney to realize what John's doing, but John can tell the minute he does, because that's when Rodney plants one foot against the wall and twists to the left. Rodney brings his arm up, textbook-perfect, straight from the shoulder, slamming his palm right into the join of John's thumb and wrist; the shock of it, jarring and abrupt, knocks John's grip loose. Loose enough for Rodney to drop his chin and shove John's hand away with the followthrough. John isn't expecting it, and it wrenches his thumb hard against Rodney's jaw. Rodney jabs his other palm into John's solar plexus hard enough to force John back half a step, gasping. 

John should have been expecting it. He taught Rodney that move. He taught Rodney a lot of things Rodney never should have needed to know.

"Okay," Rodney says, neat and tight and clipped and just a bit too loud in John's ears. He doesn't flee, just stands against the wall, right up in John's space, breathing hard. "I am _not_ doing this."

"There's a lot of things you've done today that you shouldn't," John says. He's breathing from all the way up in his throat, just past the lump of all the other things it would be a really bad idea to say. The muscle in his eye beats _tick tick tick_ and he forces himself not to take that half-step right back to where he was.

Rodney's eyes narrow. "In what universe are you living where this is even remotely a good idea?" he spits. 

John puts one hand against the wall, right next to Rodney's head. He can see Rodney's eyes flick over to it, briefly. Rodney's lips are slick and red and vibrant, like Rodney's face, like Rodney's hands, like all the pieces of Rodney that are held together by skin and hair and not spread out in paste and puree over a mile of foreign soil. John leans in, smooth like flying, and Rodney's eyes widen a fraction of a second before John nips lightly at his lower lip, right at the spot he knows is hardwired to Rodney's dick.

Rodney leans into it, naked and needy, for a minute, and then he makes a small frustrated sound and pulls back. "So, what, if shoving me against the wall and trying to fuck me senseless doesn't work, you'll try another way?" He runs out of words, waves his hands. "You know, _normal_ people can have sex without the near-death experience first."

For a second, John doesn't get it, because there's nothing normal about either of them and he thought they both knew it. Then he freezes. 

Rodney puts his hands on John's shoulders, gives them one good shake. "And don't fucking look at me like that. It's a shitty way of trying to cope with the fact you're pissed about what happened down there, and you know it."

It might be a shitty way of coping, but it's gotten them this far. "I--" John says. Rodney shakes him again. The audacity of it pisses him off enough to make him honest. "You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't have to --"

His goddamn voice catches. He can hear it, and it makes his cheeks start to burn. Rodney hears it too, and all the tension and the anger melts out of his shoulders. He wraps his hand around John's wrist, pulls John's hand down, digs his thumb lightly into the wrenched tendon in apologetic massage. "John," Rodney says, and there's a universe of meaning in that one name.

John breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth, chest rising and falling, and the air works its way into his lungs just the way Rodney has. "You didn't come here for this," he says. He can hear the sands of the desert in his voice, and the searing heat of his own skin baking.

" _John_." There's no anger there anymore, just a quiet determination. Rodney cups John's face in his hands and holds John's eyes with his own, clear and warm. "I didn't come here for a lot of things."

Something inside John's chest cracks and spills open at the touch. "You should be in the lab," he says. The words fall out of him like pebbles down a hill, and he can feel the avalanche coming. "Bitching that your chair isn't ergonomic and throwing things at Zelenka when he interrupts you and -- coming up with fifteen brilliant plans in the space of an hour and rewriting every physics textbook ever and making idiots cringe when they hear you coming, you should be safe and happy and ignorant and -- never have learned what someone sounds like when they're dying and never know what it feels like to never be able to wash your hands clean --"

"John," Rodney says, when he's halfway through, and "John," Rodney says, again and again, but there are a lot of things John never starts to say because once he does he can't stop and this is one of them. 

"--my fault," John says, and "not for me, never for me, it's not worth it, you don't know what you're doing, you don't know what you're getting into, you should never have had to --" The words aren't enough, aren't even close to being right, but they're the only thing he has, even if he's never been able to say them before. 

Rodney is pushing him backwards, one step at a time, shaking his head at every sentence fragment. "Listen to me," he is saying, atop everything John will regret saying in the morning. "Listen to me, listen to me, you fucking idiot, of course I'm terrified, I wouldn't change a thing, you aren't the only one who has to do this, I never knew what I could do until I had to, it's not your fault --" The backs of John's knees hit the bed, and he goes over hard. Rodney leans over him, face pale and scared. "It's worth it. No matter what, it's worth it."

John shakes his head and pushes himself up on one elbow. Rodney doesn't know that you can't reckon the full cost until long after it's all over. He can't think of anything he wouldn't give to keep Rodney from ever learning that.

"No," Rodney says as John opens his mouth. "You listen to me, because I am not done talking yet. You are not the only person who gets to save the world." Rodney straddles John's hips, pulls his shirt over his head and throws it over one shoulder, not caring where it lands. John can't tear his eyes away. "I'd kill a hundred people if I had to, if it's them or us, and I always would have. I just never knew I _could_."

And maybe that's even worse. "You shouldn't --"

"If you throw away everything I've learned in the past four years by finishing that sentence," Rodney says, "I am walking out of here and I am never coming back."

John drops his eyes. He reaches for Rodney, because if he can't figure out how to say it he might be able to figure out how to show it, but Rodney knocks his hands away. "No," Rodney says. He digs his fingers underneath the waistband of John's pants, right underneath his own thighs. "You don't get to run away this time." 

John has no idea what Rodney means, but Rodney hitches back and the curve of his ass rubs right against John's dick. He's gotta be twisted, because it's getting him hard. Rodney doesn't seem to mind, though; he just rocks back again and brushes his fingers against the patch of hair beneath John's navel. 

There's something disturbing about being held down like this. John pushes himself up on his elbows again, then up to his hands, trying to decide if he's going to squirm free. Rodney makes an exasperated noise, the kind he uses on recalcitrant computers, and leans forward to pin them both to the bed with his weight.

This close, Rodney's eyes are wide and generous. "You are an idiot," he says. John can feel the currents of air his breath stirs between them. "And possibly insane. Probably. Probably insane."

It shouldn't be as comforting as it is.

Rodney kisses the corner of his mouth. "Tell me what happened to you."

They don't talk about it. Have never talked about it, not through any of this. Rodney's the closest anyone's gotten in years and it's still not enough. "I went off to war," John says. It's all he has.

Rodney's lips round the edge of John's jaw, over the stubble and the dirt and the scars. "I know," he says, soft and sad. "But it's time to come back."

Easy to say, easy to think, even, but John wouldn't even know where to start. "I --" he says, but Rodney's tongue flickers out to taste the shape of his lower lip.

"Close your eyes," Rodney says, and John does.

There hasn't been only darkness behind his eyes for longer than John can remember, but maybe Rodney can drown out the pictures, because all he can see now is the warm velvet black. Rodney settles against his chest, almost too much weight to bear, and kisses him. It's gentle and tentative and soft and slow, nothing like he's felt for so long it seems like falling. Almost like a lullabye. Then Rodney shifts just a little, pushes himself up on his arms and licks at John's tongue, and the kiss blows through John like a bullet and settles right behind his breastbone.

"Time to come home," Rodney says into John's mouth. John is panting, hard sharp breaths, stretching in ways he's never thought of before. Rodney kisses him like it's the last thing he'll ever do. It's almost too much, and John can feel himself arching up into Rodney's touch. 

_Yes, yes,_ Rodney's body is saying against him, and Rodney breaks off the kiss just long enough to pull John's shirt off him. John has to look, has to _see_. When he opens his eyes, Rodney is staring down at him like he's something new and strange, hair askew and face flushed, and John suddenly thinks that Rodney is so far away from beautiful that perhaps he's come around the other side. "Close your eyes," Rodney says again, and John does, bringing that look with him the entire time.

Rodney kisses him for what feels like forever. John never used to like kissing, always thought of it as sloppy and messy and uncomfortably intimate. With Rodney, it's not any different, but maybe that's why he doesn't mind. Rodney always brings this focused determination, kisses like he's trying to say something and this is the only vocabulary he has. His arms must be tired from holding himself up, but he doesn't seem to notice. 

John's head is swimming by the time Rodney draws back and mouths his way along John's jaw. In the darkness, each touch feels like a beacon, grounding him in the reality of his skin. He feels like he should do something, say something, but when he shifts his weight in preparation for rolling over and wrapping his body around Rodney's, Rodney bites his earlobe. 

"No," Rodney says, sharp and edged. He laces the fingers of their hands together and pushes John's hands down against the bed, capturing them with his weight, and John can feel the ridges of callus along the sides of Rodney's fingers, twin to his own. Rodney kisses his way down John's neckline, leaving damp trails and nerves that are beginning to prickle and burn, and then curls his tongue around the chain of John's dogtags to bring it between his teeth.

It's a shock; John has been wearing them for so long he always forgets. He opens his eyes. Rodney is staring at him, chain spilling from his mouth. Before John can say anything, Rodney is kissing him again, and the chain tastes like iron and is warm between their tongues. 

Rodney lets one of John's hands go, wrapping it around the tags instead and pulling the chain over John's head. They make a soft _tick, tick_ sound against the floor as Rodney throws them over his shoulder without looking and then runs his hand down John's side, gripping the curve of John's hip and digging his fingers in. It's enough to leave a bruise, and John knows he should protest, but right now it feels like the only thing keeping him from floating off the bed entirely.

He closes his eyes again. This is usually the part where Rodney is talking a mile a minute, strings of words that sometimes only barely make sense, but the room's so quiet John can hear the thumping of his own heartbeat in his chest. "Rodney," he says, to fill the space. 

Rodney rolls to one side and fits himself up against the side of John's body, kissing him again. "Shh," he says. He kneads John's cock through the fabric of his pants, and John bites his lip and wraps his free hand around the curve of Rodney's shoulder. He's hovering right on the edge between really fucking turned on and really fucking uncomfortable, and if Rodney notices -- which of course he does, because Rodney notices everything -- he doesn't seem to care. He just rubs his palm against the base of John's cock, runs his fingertips along the seams of John's pants, and John doesn't even know why the silence disturbs him so badly.

But it does. "Say something," he says. His voice sounds distant and strange in his own ears, like the way it sounds on a recording. It's dark behind his eyes, and the touch isn't enough to keep him from falling in. "Rodney, Jesus, say something so I know I'm not alone in here."

Rodney's weight shifts on the bed next to him again. He has an instant to regret the loss of the familiar way Rodney's body feels, stretched out next to his, and then there are hands undoing his belt and his pants and pushing them down and away. The bed dips between his legs, and he can feel the shift and stir of air against his cock as Rodney says, "You know you're not," nothing more, right before taking him into his mouth.

No sight, no sound; the touch slides through him warm and wet and it's exactly what he needs, rough and gentle at the same time. He moans just to hear something, and then does it again against his will when the tip of Rodney's tongue circles the head of his shaft and runs down the underside of it. Something about the sound must get under Rodney's skin, because all of a sudden Rodney is licking and sucking, hands everywhere all at once, and John feels the pressure building up right in the back of his throat and eyes.

His body wants to move without telling him about it first. His shoulderblades come off the bed as he throws his head back; blindly, he reaches for Rodney, and one hand lands on Rodney's head and one on the side of Rodney's face. He can feel the tiny shifts of Rodney's jaw beneath his fingertips. Too much and not enough, all at once; he digs his fingertips into the soft skin behind Rodney's ear -- clutching? Urging? He can't even tell -- and Rodney stops for a second, draws back and takes a deep breath like he's about to say something. John doesn't need to see him to know the look on his face when he changes his mind and leans over and grabs something to drag it back over with him.

A pillow; John's legs know what that means even before he does, and they part beneath Rodney's insistent hands. Rodney pulls and pushes until he gets it tucked underneath John's hips and for half a second John's brain flashes on what he must look like to Rodney right now, naked and bare and spread open. He's breathing so hard each breath is almost a moan, and then there's a click and a bitten-off, muttered curse before Rodney swallows him down again and slides two lube-slick fingers inside him.

It's like the shock of a wave breaking over his head and dragging him under the tide. Rodney doesn't even bother to give him time to get used to it before he's fucking John with his fingers, neat and precise, all his attention centered in that one little motion, mouth nothing more than a warm presence. John rocks back against Rodney's hands and gives himself up. When he squeezes his eyes shut, watching the trails and clouds swimming in front of him, everything he's holding onto seems like the weight of nothing at all.

When Rodney lifts his head, slides his fingers free, John's breath catches in his chest and he almost, almost opens his eyes, because it's not fair for Rodney to bring him this far and then let him go. Before he can, there's one damp hand at his hip, blunt pressure between his legs and oh, _oh_ , the sound Rodney makes as he slides inside of him is the most beautiful need John's ever heard. 

Rodney puts his hands on the underside of John's thighs and pulls them up, pushes them forward. He's breathing hard as he rests his forehead on one of John's knees. "Tell me," he rasps, like it's the hardest thing he's ever done to hold back the rest of the words.

When Rodney moves inside of him, belly dragging over the tip of John's cock, stretching and filling and wrenching John open, John takes a deep breath and the pressure, the weight, breaks. He doesn't even know what to say, but his mouth is so much smarter than he is, and it's saying things like _so fucking terrified of losing you_ and _don't ever want you to break_ and _need you need you Jesus I need you_ and _anything to keep you from turning into what I did_ while Rodney fucks him deep and real. 

When Rodney wraps a hand around John's cock and strokes him, John bites the inside of his cheek and comes, brain stuttering to a sweet slick shutdown and the silence of nothing at all.

After a long minute, he can feel Rodney shifting, sliding loose and rising from the bed. He drowses, full of the closest thing to peace he's ever been able to find, while the sounds of soft footsteps and running water slide through his ears. A minute later, the bed dips again, and a warm washcloth slides over his skin to clean him.

"John," Rodney finally says. "Are you still with me?"

He opens his eyes. Rodney is watching him, soft and uncertain, with his nerves written in his eyes. John knows that look; it's the one where Rodney's convinced he isn't giving anything away at all. _Jesus,_ John thinks, _somewhere along the way I turned into the kind of person who catalogs looks_ , and it's all too much for him to deal with right now so he puts it away. He puts a hand on the nearest part of Rodney he can reach and lets his eyes close again. 

A minute, and then Rodney sighs, tolerant and exasperated. "You're not going to get out of talking about this just because you're falling asleep on me," he says, but John's ears are blurry by the end of it. He drifts for a minute, for an hour, and only wakes up enough to process it, not enough to remember it, when Rodney kisses him lightly and says "you can't have post-traumatic stress when the trauma never really goes away" with a curious sense of regret.

The sound of his door opening and closing again is louder than it should be, in the silence of his head.

**iv.**

The most beautiful sunrise possible is one at thirty thousand feet, when you're breathing air just a little bit too thin and watching tendrils of purple and rose spread across the velvet sky you've been tracking for hours with eyes that are too tired to focus completely. This isn't anything like that first painfully glorious stab of gold across your windshield, the first moment when you have to squint and fish for your sunglasses despite the fact it's so fucking perfect that shading it is a sin. It's quiet and subtle and so inch-by-inch that John barely even notices as black shifts to grey and violet and peach.

As sunrises go, though, it's not all that bad. John watches the way the mist vapor fogs and trails in the blossoming light, cupping and pooling against the city's pillars and piers. If he thinks about it long enough, he can come up with all the thermodynamic equations to explain, but some things lose their mystery when you blurt them out in words. And then, because maybe some things shouldn't be a mystery at all, he turns his back on the sunrise and goes back inside.

His skin is cool; he's only wearing a t-shirt and jeans, after all, and even if Atlantis is parked in the tropics, winter is still winter before the sun is up entirely. The corridors are mostly deserted at this time of night -- morning -- and the few people who are up and about don't seem to be any more interested in talking to him than he is in talking to them. He acknowledges distracted waves with a nod of his own and sticks his hands in his pockets. Even when he's in civvies, it always feels like a forbidden thrill. 

The door's pretty stubborn when he gets there, but John digs in his mental heels and thinks _please_ , and eventually it slides open. Rodney's awake already, or still, fighting another skirmish in his years-old war with time, that mortal enemy of all his plans to throttle the secret of everything out of the universe. He's spread out backwards and face-down on his bed, chin propped up on one palm and ankles crossed in midair, with laptop to one side of him and his overgrown tablet to the other. 

Whatever he's doing, it must be engrossing, because Rodney doesn't seem to even hear the door open. John leans against the wall and watches him for a long minute. Not too late to back out, he supposes. Rodney's scowling down at something, and John wants to kiss that line of completely-unguarded concentration between his eyebrows. He can tell the exact second when Rodney becomes aware of his presence, a subtle shift and roll of his shoulders, but Rodney finishes up whatever he's doing and taps out a last sequence of keys before looking up.

Just before Rodney's about to say whatever's lurking behind that carefully guarded expression, John says, "When I came here four years ago, I thought I was grounding myself forever. Do you have any idea what that means?"

Fifteen possible responses flit over Rodney's face. John watches him evaluate them, weigh them and sift them and discard each one, all in the split-second before he says, "Intellectually, I suppose."

John nods, because he knows Rodney doesn't. The world is divided into pilots and groundhogs. Rodney might finally be able to fly the jumper in a straight line, but he'll always have dirt firmly rubbed into his heels. The backs of John's knuckles brush against his hipbones through the cotton-thin pockets of his jeans, and he shoves his fists down and tries to remember the words he found to explain. "Imagine if someone told you that you had the opportunity of a lifetime, something brilliant and terrifying and new and strange, but in order to take it, they'd have to burn out part of your brain and you'd never be anything more than average, ever again."

The line between Rodney's eyebrows deepens. He gives John the courtesy of actually thinking about it, thinking it through, and John watches as the horror slowly breaks across Rodney's face and then is stowed carefully away. Looking at it, John wonders why he never tried to explain it like this before, because he and Rodney might not have a lot in common, but in some ways they're a hell of a lot alike. 

"I gave up the sky to come here," John says. "When they told me it was garbage runs at McMurdo or flying a desk for the rest of my career, I packed my long johns and put away my sunscreen, traded in my Nighthawk for a Black Hawk, and everything was okay. For a while. When I stepped through that gate for the first time, I thought I was never gonna fly again."

Rodney wets his lips. "I didn't -- Why would you do that?"

He knows Rodney will think he's ducking the question, but there's an order he has to tell this in, or else he'll never remember everything he needs to say. "They sent me to Antarctica because it was either that or a dishonorable discharge, and they respected my father too much for that. I got a lot of people killed. My commander told me when he signed my papers that he'd rather be transfering me to Al-Qaeda, because I'd probably kill more of them if they were on my side." When Marino had said it, it hadn't hurt at all. Then it had hurt too much. By now, it's nothing more than a dull ache of remembered pain. 

The look in Rodney's eyes is making the pit of his stomach crawl, because he's never told this story to anybody, much less someone who's got a fifty-fifty chance of not wanting to gut-punch him afterwards, and so he lifts his gaze and transfers it to the window, where violet and peach is giving way to rose and gold. "I killed a lot of people because I saw a chance and I took it. The kind of thing that really makes you, if you're right. I wasn't. It wasn't a weapons cache. It was a field hospital, and it's not there anymore." 

This is the kind of conversation that goes down better after a few shots of whiskey, but this is the way he's chosen to do it, and he's going to see it through. He takes a deep breath and trains his eyes on the way the mist is starting to burn off the water. "My squad, they'd have walked through fire for me. It always made people nervous. They followed me in that day, and when the planes from the _real_ enemy base fifteen miles out came screaming in, half of them went down. I think that's when I went a little crazy."

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Rodney shifting, sitting up and resettling himself, but he doesn't look. "So I went to Antarctica, and I flew the helicopter where they told me to, and one day I pick up this guy who doesn't seem to care as much as he should about my record and I wind up sitting down in a chair and the next thing I know, people are fighting over who gets to have me instead of fighting over who has to take me. I came because it was the furthest I could escape, and maybe I _deserved_ to be grounded."

"It was an accident," Rodney says, his voice high and tight and rushing in to fill the space when John pauses to take a breath. "You didn't do it deliberately, you didn't _know_ \--"

John laughs. It's not at all funny, but he laughs anyway, and then he brings his hands out of his pockets and presses the palms against his eyes as hard as he can. "That's not the point," he says. "The point is, I killed ninety-three civilians, and all I felt was mildly bad about fucking up." It's the one secret he's never confessed to anyone before. Saying it almost makes him feel giddy; he laughs again. "I got shot down in Kosovo once, did you know that?"

He can't read Rodney's tone when he says, "I've read your records."

John lets his hands drop, but he doesn't open his eyes again. "This isn't in the records. It was the third, fourth night of the strike. I was flying recon, and I took a hit to the wing and had to bail. Three days later and I'm half-dead from dehydration, traveling at night, and I came across one of the camps. They had about eighty people lined up in front of pits, and they were making them kneel and shooting them in the back of the head. It's amazing how humanity keeps coming back to that strategy, isn't it?" 

He keeps his voice distant, dispassionate, because with his eyes closed he can remember the sick low crack of air and the way grey matter looks when it's spread out over mud, and Rodney might know some of what that's like, but John's been moving heaven and earth to try to keep Rodney from knowing it all. "I went away for a little while," he says. "And when I came back, my left arm was broken and there was a bullet in my leg, but my hands were red and there were a lot of bodies lying around and a lot of terrified people saying things in a language I didn't speak and to this day, I _don't know what happened_."

Rodney breathes out, like he's gotten a fist to the diaphragm, but his voice is even when he says, "You forget, I've seen you do that."

John opens his eyes, because anything is easier than living through that slide show. He can just see the edges of Rodney, sitting on the bed with his knees drawn to his chest and his arms wrapped around them, but he schools his eyes on the window and doesn't dare look closer. "I'm trying to tell you I'm not the person you think I am."

"No," Rodney says. "I'm telling you that you're exactly the person I think you are. I was never laboring under the misapprehension that you were a _tame_ lion."

John has to laugh again, because the hysteria is building up in his chest and if he doesn't laugh, he'll crack. He wonders if Rodney knows this, if that's why he made the joke. His conversational outline has been so thoroughly derailed at this point he doesn't even know what he's saying. "I threw everything away and came here because it was the furthest I could possibly go, and none of it came out the way it was supposed to." 

He can hear his own voice, light and ragged in his ears like it belongs to someone else. "It's like someone decided to reroll the dice and give me another chance, and I'm fucking it all up again and nobody seems to care this time. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I got here and someone gave me back the sky and gave me a bunch of people who look up to me and respect me and somebody gave me you and I don't fucking _understand_."

He hadn't been intending to say that, but once it's free, he can't take it back. Rodney takes a deep, thoughtful breath, lets it out slowly. "Like I'm some kind of prize," he says. "Bitchy, whiny genius, all wrapped up in a bow."

Rodney doesn't understand, _can't_ understand, if he can say things like that. "You're the most real thing that's ever happened to me." Just saying it makes John want to crawl with shame, turn around and run and never come back and face the fact that the words came out of his mouth. "And I'm going to break you the way I break everyone."

Anger flares in Rodney's eyes. He holds himself very still, like if he starts to move he'll do something he'd regret later, and says, "Are you naturally this stupid, or do you work at it? Is it part of officer training? Something in the water?"

It's not the kind of thing John wants to hear when he's just pulled his heart out of his chest and thrown it on the floor. "You haven't heard a word I just said, have you?"

Rodney growls. Actually growls, deep in the back of his throat, and he picks up a pillow and whips it around his head once before shotputting it straight into John's face. John's off his game, slow and stupid, and he gets a mouthful of feathers before he can duck or throw up a hand. "I've heard every goddamn one. And you know what? I. Don't. Care. Come here."

Said in that pissy, snippy Rodney voice, it's an order, and John's moving before his brain catches up to him. He stutters to a stop next to the bed, and just as he's about to take a step back, Rodney hooks two fingers into one of his belt loops and holds. His face, as he looks up at John, is pale and furious. "Half the people on this base are here because they were colossal fuckups back on Earth. What makes you so special?"

"I don't --"

Rodney keeps talking right over him. "You're the only one who's got dead people to lose sleep over? You're the only one who's ever fucked up? Get over yourself. Jesus, you sound like a fifteen-year-old girl."

John jerks back, stopped only by Rodney's fingers in his belt loop. Rodney's not exactly Mr. Sensitivity, but John has never seen him be so deliberately cruel, at least not without provocation. They've been doing their whatever thing for a long time, at least by John's personal definitions. He hadn't expected Rodney to understand, but he hadn't been expecting this, either. 

"Don't look at me like I just killed your puppy," Rodney snaps. "You weren't really expecting me to trip over myself to buy into your Tragic Suffering Hero nonsense, were you?" His eyes widen, suddenly. "You were, weren't you. You really thought I'd listen to what you had to say and be so disgusted with you that I'd never speak to you again or something ridiculous like that, and you were trying to get it over with in a way you could control."

John splutters. "What?"

But Rodney's got the theory in his teeth and is running with it. He pulls himself up onto his knees, using John's belt loop as leverage, and then dangles his feet over the edge of the bed and stares at John like he's a set of blueprints. "You've been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since we started this thing. Waiting for -- for what, for me to figure out your deep dark secret and suddenly be horrified and drop you like a hot potato? And that's why you've been keeping me at arm's length this whole time, that's why you're trying to shut me out now, because you wanted to get as much as you could in the meantime and you wanted it to hurt less when it finally happened. And people think _I_ have the emotional skills of a retarded rhesus monkey."

It's the most patently ridiculous thing John's ever heard. He shoves at Rodney's shoulders to dislodge him, resorts to picking at Rodney's fingers to free himself when it fails. Rodney digs in his heels and holds tighter, even when John gets his thumb into the ridge between the tendons for index and middle fingers and squeezes. "I'm not shutting you out of anything," he hisses. "I'm _trying_ to --" He breaks off, because "I'm trying to let you in" really _would_ make him sound like a fifteen-year-old girl. 

Rodney laughs, silently, his shoulders quivering for a second. "John," he says, voice tender and weary all at once, "you shut everyone out. Just because you keep me at arm's length instead of half a mile away doesn't mean the distance isn't still there."

All the fight goes out of John, because that strikes a little too close to home. He draws his shoulders up and fastens his eyes on the wall over Rodney's head. "I wasn't aware I was causing you such distress," he says, all stiff and formal. "Clearly I was wrong about -- about all of this. I won't bother you again."

"Idiot," Rodney says, without any heat behind it. He wraps his arms around John's waist and presses his cheek to the slight curve of John's stomach. John's hands come up automatically, ready to push away, because sometimes he thinks he has a personal space bubble the size of Atlantis, especially at times like these. Rodney's always been shit at respecting his bubble, though, and after a second, he realizes he's almost starting not to mind. 

"You think you gave too much away two nights ago," Rodney says against his belly. "And you came down here to try and scare me off before I put it all together."

There isn't anything John can say to that. Rodney isn't acting even remotely the way he should. "I don't know what you think you're talking about," he says, stiffly. "We're casual. Nothing more." It's what he's been telling himself from moment one. It's the only way he allowed himself to let this go on for so long in the first place.

"Yeah, and I might even buy that," Rodney says, "if I were _stupid_ ," and there, that's it. John's _real_ biggest secret, the one he hasn't even let himself _think_ , identified and dismissed in the span of a couple heartbeats and a few words. He breathes out, sharp and rough, and Rodney is smiling ruefully when he looks up and tightens his arms a little. "But you can go back to pretending if you really need to."

John isn't sure whether he wants to laugh or scream. "I have no idea what you want from me."

"I know," Rodney says. John has just enough time to recognize the pain in it, deep and wide, before Rodney presses his lips against the strip of skin visible underneath John's shirt -- they are old jeans, familiar, worn soft and low at the hips and through the insides of the thighs -- and lets go. 

He takes the first step back before he even realizes he's doing it, because that's what he always does once he gets free. It isn't until he's halfway through the second one that he realizes Rodney's face is blank and mirrored. That stops him, because he's indexed a thousand of Rodney's expressions and he's never seen this one before except in his own mirror. 

There is nothing worse than realizing, three-quarters of the way through a conversation, that you are being given an ultimatum. It is the third time it has happened to John, and it gets harder every single damn time.

"I," he starts, and something surges up from the same spot in the back of his brain that solves equations without telling him and presents the solution to him in a starburst supernova, fully formed. "I don't want to walk out of here." 

He is startled to realize, when he hears himself saying it, that it is true. It's the strangest feeling he can remember. Things are clicking and falling into place, all the afternoons of arguing about sports and the evenings of watching bad movies and listening to Rodney rant about popular depictions of science, all the mornings where he fights Rodney for the last of the not-quite-blueberry muffins and all the nights when his run takes him past the lab and the light makes him stop and get in a round of bickering before bed. All the ways in which Rodney makes him normal, piece by piece, repainting his definitions with nothing more than sheer force of will and matter-of-fact acceptance, and has nearly from the start.

_Oh,_ he has time to think, before Rodney is burying his face in his hands and -- laughing? Crying? Laughing, because he can't make crying fit, not into the outline of Rodney he's become familiar with. And when Rodney picks his head up, his eyes are dry, but his mouth is set. "Maybe I want you to." 

It's like getting punched in the stomach, hard and fast, and it leaves a cold knot behind, because John can't remember a single moment in so long when Rodney's ever failed to give him what he needs. And that makes him stop again, because he hadn't realized, he hadn't _realized_ , and oh, maybe Rodney is right, maybe John really is as colossally stupid as Rodney keeps insisting, because all the variables have been right there for the solving. And when Rodney McKay understands people better than you do, it's either a sign that you're very, very dumb, or Rodney is a hell of a lot smarter than people give him credit for.

John is ready to put money on the latter. He doesn't know when, and he doesn't know how, but somewhere along the line Rodney seems to have put all the pieces together while John was still stuck on fitting together the blue sky bits, and it's about time he starts trying to catch up. In his head, John tightens his parachute straps, kisses his fingers and touches them to the side of the hatch for luck, and takes that first step out over open air. "No," he says. The look he gets is almost worth it. "You really don't."

Maybe Rodney can see the free-fall on John's face, because he scrunches up his eyebrows and opens his mouth, then closes it again. It's not often John can render Rodney speechless; it's always a victory more dear than nearly any other. John grins, and then the grin turns into a laugh at the indignant expression it provokes, and suddenly the laugh has moved down into his belly and taken hold and it feels like clear skies and full throttle. He pulls his t-shirt over his head and throws it on the floor.

"Wait," Rodney says, and "what --" Rodney says, and "John --" and that's how John knows he's right, because Rodney is scrupulously careful not to speak his name unless he thinks John is ready to hear it. He closes the space between them and puts his hands on Rodney's shoulders, so familiar and solid and yet he's feeling them again for the first time. He's laughing still, because he's been so fucking _stupid_ , and he's already looking forward to all the ways Rodney is going to tell him about it. 

"Try to keep up, Rodney," he says, sliding his hands up the sides of Rodney's neck to cup his cheeks and stroke one thumb over Rodney's cheekbones. Rodney splutters again, and John is laughing like he's flying, laughing like he's free, when he bends down and kisses him, a soft chuff of breath against Rodney's lips and the pale puddle of sunlight creeping its way across the tangled sheets.


End file.
